Research on Risk and Resilience Evaluation of Urban Underground Public Space

Abstract

High urban density, land scarcity, rapid population growth, and traffic congestion have restricted urban development. In response, selected multiple functions have increasingly been integrated into the underground public space (UPS) to maximize the 3D utilization of precious urban space. The accelerated intensity of UPS use has alerted safety concerns. UPS with enclosed and confined natures, complex building structures, locations usually in cramped areas, and limited emergency exits are potentially more prone to heavy casualties and losses in natural or human-made disasters. As research on UPS safety is limited and focused on single risks, we attempted to fill the knowledge gap by developing an integrated risk analysis of UPS to understand risk resilience and improve risk management. From the perspective of the UPS system, four latent factors were identified: natural environment, economic environment, facilities and equipment, and physical structure. Seventeen resilience indicators subsumed under the factors were selected based on resilience concepts. A questionnaire was designed to gather opinions on the relative importance rating of the resilience indicators. SPSS and AMOS software were enlisted to build a structural equation model (SEM), validate the data and model, and calculate the path coefficients and index weights to test four hypotheses. The SEM model results were employed to develop a holistic resilience enhancement strategy under a four-phase framework: before, during, after, and long-term, and under four latent factors. The resilience enhancements can optimize UPS disaster prevention, rescue and evacuation, mitigation, and response management.

Are the epidemic prevention facilities effective? How cities should choose epidemic prevention facilities: Taking Wuhan as an example

“…The suddenness of natural disasters, the frequency of man-made disasters, and the proliferation of public health and safety events have led to a significant increase in the types and contents of disasters, which needs to be considered for urban disaster prevention (3)(4)(5). The current high population density, high population mobility, delayed infrastructure construction, chaotic structural layout, and large building vulnerability in cities have brought a severe test to the safety of cities (6,7). How to solve the weak foundation of urban disaster prevention, how to improve emergency response capability, and how to generally improve the comprehensive disaster prevention capability of cities have become a tough task in the current era (8)(9)(10).…”

“…In fact, epidemic prevention facilities are rarely mentioned in comprehensive disaster prevention and mitigation plans for cities around the world (20,21). Most of the studies about urban disaster facilities focus on assessing the ability of cities to cope with natural disasters from the perspectives of floods, fires, and earthquakes, combing with population data, urban infrastructure, social factors and so on (7,(22)(23)(24)(25). Existing studies indicate the characteristics and development trends of global urban disasters and major emergencies, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of urban disaster prevention facilities and conducting a macroscopic assessment of urban emergency measures to optimize the disaster prevention planning (26)(27)(28).…”